


Episode 903:  Little Orphan Sammy

by agelade



Series: Lustra: A Supernatural Season 9 AU [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Timeline, Broken Brother Bond, Brother Bond of Steel, Gen, POV Dean Winchester, Purg Issues, careful what you wish for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-25
Updated: 2013-08-24
Packaged: 2017-12-24 13:46:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/940676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agelade/pseuds/agelade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode 3 in Lustra, a Supernatural Season 9 AU. </p><p>Sam and Dean have fulfilled their end of the deal with Death (barely), and Death makes good. He doesn't do loopholes, and he doesn't play tricks. Dean gets exactly what he asks for, but is he prepared for the consequences?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

** **

**Episode 903**  
“Little Orphan Sammy”  
Chapter One

 

Dean wakes up slow in the morning.  His bed is warm, and he’s in Montana and it’s just coming out of spring here, the late April frosts are warming over and the early buds are pinking the trees.  He can see it’s cold outside just by the way the sunlight is so thin and white, and he thinks he can smell that it’s been raining.

So his bed is warm and not so uncomfortable that he wouldn’t rather just hunker in for a while.  But there’s a ghost and there’s a lady and there’s work to be done.

So Dean hauls himself out of bed.  Swings his legs over the side and thumps his feet onto the cold floor of the motel room.  Things aren’t that different without Dad.  And he thinks, that’s sad; he’d have thought _everything_ would have changed if Dad died.

But then he did, and he’s gone, almost a year now, and nothing has changed except Dean is alone.  He’s still on the road.  Sleeping in motel rooms.  Defrauding innocent civilians to finance his extravagant diner fare and vending machine lifestyle.

Hunting and saving lives and drinking to fill this incredible emptiness that is, he thinks, Dad, being gone.

Dean stumps across the room to splash water on his face, thinks about Dad, thinks about this thing in him that rubs raw like a fresh wound, even though, even though Dad had been distant awhile before he died, and he’d left for longer at a time, forbidding Dean to come with, and then he was gone.

And Dean is okay.  Dean is okay.  He’s been okay for months.

So why is this ache, what is this longing.  He had never taken care of Dad, he had never been responsible for Dad, and he thinks, as he looks in the mirror at himself.  That little brother he remembers in his arms, he’s always thought he’d have been an awesome big brother, he’d have been responsible, he’d have taken care--

And now it’s his face in the mirror, his face, lined and aged beyond what he remembers from just yesterday, and then it hits him, it hits him--

 _Sammy_.

Sam is gone.

 

* * *

 

Dean sits on his bed, knees apart, hands hanging between them, and his heart is broken.  Around him, there is no sign of that brilliant asshole mopey sunlit brat that has been glued to his side for some thirty odd years.

There’s no second toothbrush.  There’s no photo in his wallet of a mop of hair and dimples and that face he knew chicks would be all over if Sam would just Winchester up and get after it.

And there’s no sense of home here.  This place is more temporary, he thinks, than anywhere else he’s stayed, even though it’s clear his counterpart has been here at least a week.  His own belongings are neatly arranged, but he knows that’s not him.  Or he thinks, _that’s not me_.   _Sam’s the neat one._  But is Dean only messy as a reflection of Sam?  Is Dean only messy because that identifies them to each other?  Because a trait in one brother amplifies the reverse in the other?  Is this what a life without Sam is?  Alone, tidy, undirected, unloved.

But he’s gone through those neatly arranged things, and they’re his.  Obviously they’re his.  He knows what this is.  He asked for this.

_You asked for this.  Now Winchester up._

But he sits for another ten minutes, mourning his brother, mourning their friendship, their whatever-this-is-between-us.  

It feels worse than he thought it would.  It feels like he might as well have let the world end.  It feels like the world has ended already.  

It feels like there never was a world in the first place.

Dean checks his watch, not because he thinks Death might have screwed up.  He just needs to check.  He has time.  

He’d planned time for this.

He drinks for an entire day.

Four days later, he’s travelling past a sign that says “Cold Oak -- 24 miles.”  Sam will be there, fighting for his life, because Dean planned this too.  He isn’t stupid.

He finds Sam in the middle of a dusty abandoned street, beseeching the other kids.  He looks so young when he says “No one’s killing anyone, okay?  We can get out of here if we just refuse to fight each other and work together.”

Dean is so fucking proud that Sam is still Sam, no matter what.

“He’s right,” Dean says, walking up.

The kids all turn at look at him.  They eyeball him, and each other; no one trusts anyone.  Sam’s face does not light up in recognition.

“Who are you?” the black kid asks.  Dean remembers this kid, this _thing_ that took Sam from him.  Dean is tempted to end him right here, right now.

“I’m Dean,” Dean says.  “I just woke up here.”  He remembers the story Sam told, he remembers the broken sobbing mess of a twenty-two year old who’s just realized that he’d died and that everyone else had died, and that he’d killed someone more or less in cold blood, and that his brother was going to go to Hell for him in less than a year.

It’d been a great day.  Sam had needed him.  Sam had cursed at him and hit him and clung to him, saying _How could you do that, how could you make me go on without you._

“Do you have a weird power too?” Sam asks.

“I can uh, I can kinda see the future.”

It’s not even really a lie.

Sam looks at him with that little wrinkle over his eyes, and Dean knows it’s because Sam can see the future too, and right now Sam is wondering if Dean and he are related somehow.  And he wants to say _Yes, yes it’s me, you’re my brother._

But that would defeat the purpose of all of this.

So Dean shrugs and says, “So can Ava.”

Ava blinks at him from behind the rest of them where she stands.  She and Sam don’t appear to know each other, and Dean is grateful, because finding her apartment bloody and her fiance dead had wrecked Sam for months.  Now she’s just another anonymous kid Sam has never met or had to console or fought to save.

“And so can I,” Sam says then.  “And Jake is super strong, and Andy--”  Dean recognizes Andy then, a beaten down kid with a scar across his face that Dean doesn’t remember.  Dean guesses he’d taken on his crazy evil twin on his own and maybe barely won, or even lost.  Either way, his twin isn’t here in Cold Oak, and this kid looks nothing like the stoned, cheerfully nervous kid Dean and Sam had met.  “Andy can make people do things with his voice.”

“But I don’t really use it,” Andy says.  He wraps his arms around himself.  

Ava is shaking her head.  “I don’t want to fight either.  But what else can we do?  This thing has already killed Lily.”

Dean frowns and follows Ava’s line of sight up and behind him.  A girl’s body hangs from a windmill, gruesome, and definitely more of a sign to the kids than a monster killing indiscriminately.

“We gotta get inside, get shelter,” Dean says.  “Find salt, anything iron you can swing.”

Sam is wrinkling his nose.  “Salt?  Iron?”

Against logic, Dean finds himself irritated.  “Yeah, salt and iron.”  Then he rolls his eyes.  “You don’t even know where you are, do you.”  Sam’s blank look matches the other kids’.  “This is Cold Oak, South Dakota.  The most haunted town in the world.  The thing that brought you-- _us_ here.  It’s a demon.  But it’s not what’s going to kill us if we just hang around outside, okay?  We need to get protected, like now.”

It takes a moment of doubt and thought, but after a long look up at Lily hanging from the windmill, the kids turn to head into one of the abandoned shacks.

That moment of doubt returns in the form of bitchiness once Dean starts laying out a plan.  “The name of the game is defend,” he says, and tells them to salt the doors and windows.  “We’re going to beat back every son of a bitch all night long, and then in the morning, we’ll head out, armed.”

But Sam isn’t buying it, and because he is tall and sincere, he’s still the one the others look to, even if Dean is older and more obviously experienced.

“Armed with what?  Salt?  You’re going to get us all killed.”

“I’m trying to keep you all alive,” Dean counters.  “Salt and iron are our best defenses against the ghosts that haunt this place, and for the demon, holy water.”

Sam presses his lips together and he almost looks like he pities Dean, like Dean is _crazy_ , and isn’t that just hilarious.

“Listen,” Dean continues, “you’re _psychic_.  And you’re having trouble believing in ghosts?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam says.  “Because I’m not insane.”

“Thank god for that,” Dean mutters, but aloud he says, “You’re telling me you’ve never noticed anything odd that you couldn’t explain.”

“Just because science hasn’t--”

“So you have.”

Sam is quiet.  Dean can tell he’s hit on something, but he doesn’t have time to find out what, because Jake is coming back into the little shack in a hurry, saying he’s found the jugs of water Dean asked him to look for.

“Okay, now, no one leaves.  Everyone got your weapons handy?”  The four kids, and Dean includes Sam in that even though it cuts his heart in half to consider Sam just one of these potential victims rather than the hero he’s supposed to be, brandish their fireplace pokers and crowbars.  “Great.”  It’s going to be a long night.

Dean doesn’t sleep.  He spends the time with his head bowed over a rosary, blessing water.  Inside of him, there is a stirring feeling, a wriggling thing.  Someone else saying, what am I doing here?  What has happened to me?  Memories assault him, of a baby in his arms that he never sees again, of questions his father refuses to answer.  Of his father’s absence for days whenever they’d pass through Kansas.  And there’s this strange bewildered hope whenever he looks at Sam, calls him Sam, loves Sam -- is that Sam?  Tell him I’m here.  Tell him I never forgot him.  And when he looks at Sam, he feels these things, these desperate things and he shoves them down, because he’s not staying with Sam after this no matter how much that other voice protests.  

That would defeat the purpose.  

But he wants to.  He needs to.  He’s desperate for some family, even if there’s over twenty years of distance between them, even if Sam doesn’t know him.  The part of him that has been alone for almost a year after Dad’s death is breathless for even a stranger named Sam.

This is the Dean Dean replaced.  Part of his deal with Death.   _You gotta put me there, a week before Cold Oak.  Sam won’t know how to save himself.  I won’t be there._

In a way, it’s fitting.  That he should have to suffer two different lives competing for space in his head, in order to spare Sam a similar fate.  That he should have to shuffle between his own memories and the memories of the Dean he is inhabiting.  That he should struggle to separate himself out in the jumble.  That he and this other Dean will have to spend the rest of their lives together, fighting it out, for Sam’s sake.

But he knows himself.  Neither Dean would hesitate to pay any price.

The others take turns dozing.  Sam drops off despite trying not to, and he’s out for maybe ten minutes before he jerks awake in a panic.  Dean is at his side in an instant, and Sam is babbling about a demon and his mother for a long moment before they both seem to realize this level of closeness is inappropriate, Dean remembering belatedly that this Sam doesn’t know him, Sam seeming to come to his senses only to find he’s chattering to a stranger.  They push apart and Dean frowns.

And then Sam says, “Where’s Ava?”

“I’ll go find her,” Jake says.

Dean frowns.  He doesn’t want to leave Sam, but he doesn’t trust Jake not to kill Ava when he gets the chance.  The young soldier has seemed pretty earnest and nice enough so far, but all Dean can see when he looks at him is Sam dying in the street, in the dirt, in Dean’s arms.  Andy, on the other hand, Dean knows.  Andy won’t kill Sam.  Andy looks like he never wants to use his powers again.

“I’ll go with you,” Dean says.

Andy is rubbing drool from his mouth and he says, “I’ll stay here.”

Sam laughs short and says, “I’ll go--”

“You stay,” Dean says.  He eyebrows over at Andy, and Sam’s shoulders relax into understanding when he sees the sleep-honest fear lining Andy’s face.

“I’ll stay,” Sam says.  He picks up his crowbar and smiles at Andy, who smiles back gratefully.

Dean and Jake are out ten minutes, stumping through the streets and back alleys with one flashlight between them.  Dean tries to make smalltalk; Jake doesn’t engage much.  And then there’s a shout from back at the shack and Dean and Jake run full tilt.

There’s a demon swooping at them, incorporeal, but shaped like a little girl that Jake appears to recognize.  Sam is hesitant to strike at her, but Dean lunges in and takes a swing.  She vanishes.  Sam looks up at Dean, bewildered, but he nods then, and in the battle that follows, Andy is injured, Jake and Sam and Dean are fine, and Ava rushes in breathless when it’s over.

“I heard a scream!” she says as she skids to a stop.  “You’re all okay!”

“Yeah,” Sam says.  He’s still who they all look to.  “We’re fine.  Are _you_ okay?  You can’t go running off--”

“I’m fine.  I just.  I panicked, I had this dream.  I had to get out.  But I got to the forest line and it got scary, so--”

“It’s okay.  You’re okay,” Sam soothes.  Dean smiles.  This is like seven years ago for Dean, and while Sam hasn’t lost this softness, it’s a lot rarer where Dean comes from.  Where Dean comes from, Sam has stopped talking to people.  He wanders off and lets Dean wrap it up.  He goes to sit alone in the car while Dean tells the victims to call again if they ever need help.  He sits alone, he speaks to no one, back where Dean is from.  Contrasted with this Sam here and now, it’s obvious, and Dean feels like shit for not noticing how solitary his brother has become.

“We’re all okay,” Dean says.  “Let’s just fix this up and then I gotta try to figure out how the demon got in.  Stay alert, and we’ll get through it.”  He looks at Ava.  “And no more running off.  Got it?”

She smiles.  “Got it.”

Andy helps Dean fix the salt line at the door that he and Jake broke running back in.  Sam is running his finger along the windows and the other door.  When they’re all done and meeting back in the middle, Sam says, “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?”

Dean nods and tries to pretend they are strangers.  Sam leads him toward the back window, saying, “So, iron is a good weapon.  I was wondering about...”

And then Sam is trailing off and looking out at the others gathered in the middle of the room and he kind of looks down, drawing Dean’s eye to the window sill where three lines have been dug into the salt pile like fingers have been scraped through it, and Dean swears.

And now when he looks out at the others, he sees how fake she is, how she’s just a bit distant from the rest of them, laughing only when the others look at her after a joke, nodding a bit too sympathetically.

“Oh dammit,” Dean says.  “You didn’t tell me about Ava.”  

Sam is bewildered by this, but then she’s looking at them, and Dean says, “Make a circle of salt on the floor around them--”

Just as the wind picks up again and black smoke billows up out of the window frame.  Sam urges them all into the middle and throws out a salt line like this is in his blood _it’s in your blood, Sammy_ , and the demon is on Dean, and Ava is laughing for real now, and the demon has Dean against the wall, and he’s seeing stars, and Ava is saying “You don’t know how powerful you can be if you just give in to it!  It’s exhilarating!”  

The world is going gray.

And then there’s a shriek and it stops, and the demon is funneled away and Sam is standing over Ava with his crowbar and she’s on the ground.

And Sam is expressionless.


	2. Chapter 2

** **

**Episode 903**  
“Little Orphan Sammy”  
Chapter Two

 

The next morning, there are only three of them left with Dean.  Ava’s unconscious body is left in the shack, where Dean is sure the demon she’d been controlling will find her and take its own justice.  They are armed with iron and holy water and salt, and they’ve been memorizing Latin.  They are a four person team on a mission to take down the demon who brought them to Cold Oak.

“We’re just gonna leave her there,” Sam says in the passenger seat.

Dean watches the road.  “Got a better idea?”

Sam turns to watch the road too.  “Nope.”

Dean swallows rough.  Okay then.  He’d had a whole argument ready and everything.

After a moment, Sam says: “How do we even kill a demon?”

“There’s a gun that can do it.  I have it in the trunk.”

“You have a gun that can kill a demon,” Sam says, and makes that bitchy face, and Dean’s heart tries to escape through his mouth.  “And we were using _salt_?”

“It’s special,” Dean replies.  “There’s only three bullets left.”

“Oh.  Great.”

They arrive at the demon’s gate sometime around noon the next day and take the afternoon to set things up.  Sam persuades Andy to use his power just once, to get them all some rooms for free at the motel, because none of them have money, and Andy is sweating and nervous and Sam opts to stay with him in his room to calm him down.  Dean wants to countermand that; Sam belongs in Dean’s room.  But that would defeat the purpose, and Andy looks so grateful and white and shaking -- and Dean sits in his own room with Jake and considers all the lives Sam should have saved by now, and how they’re probably dead or like Andy, shattered people.  Or maybe Dean and Dad had saved them, or maybe that was why Dad was dead now, or --

Anyway, the plan is simple.  Jake is going to make like he’s opening the gate, and when Yellow Eyes pops up to see why it isn’t working, Dean and Sam will show up to fight him.  Jake will pretend to be on Yellow Eyes’ side long enough to get next to him, and Sam will distract him, although Sam is still confused about why he’s apparently the golden boy when Jake is so much more powerful than he is, and Dean can’t figure out how to say that this demon bastard has some kind of sick obsession with Sam.  And while Yellow Eyes is busy with Sam, Jake will turn the tables and get the bastard under control, at least long enough for Dean to get his shot.

“Hey,” Sam says.  He hops up on the hood of the car next to Dean.  It’s four in the afternoon and Dean has needed a beer for hours.  He pops another one and hands it to Sam.  It feels so normal; his heart god fuck.

“Hey.”

“So you think we have a chance of beating this thing?”

Dean sighs.  “I hope so.  He’ll just keep coming after you if we don’t get him tonight.”

“What _is_ that gun?”

“The Colt?  Just a little thing I picked up from a fellow hunter--”  At Sam’s confusion, Dean explains, “There’s a bunch of us.  We go around finding fuglies and ending them.  Saving people.  That kinda thing.”

“Hunting things.  Saving people.”  Sam smiles.  “Sign me up.”

Dean laughs and feels so ill.  “Yeah, I don’t think so.  You are going back to school.”

Sam frowns.  “How’d you know--”

“Psychic, remember?”

“Right.”

They drink in silence for a few minutes.  Then Sam says, “So we have one gun and three bullets.  Is that going to be enough?”  He glances back at the motel rooms where a perpetually shell-shocked Andy and a quietly menacing Jake pace.

Dean nods.  “I’m a pretty good shot.  Assuming everything goes even close to plan.”

“And we can’t get another gun like it?”

“Nope.  One of a kind.  Like I said, I made a special trip to get this one when I uh, saw this about to happen.  With my --”

“Psychic thing, right.”

“Right.  I went by Palo Alto, but I didn’t know your name, so I just looked around the school, asked around.  Didn’t find you.”  That’s true too.  Sam isn’t Sam Winchester here.  Dean doesn’t know what Sam is here.

“Palo Alto?  Like.  Stanford?”

“Yeah.”  Dean pushes back nausea, sudden, inexplicable.  And then Sam says:

“Yeah, in another life maybe.”

Ain’t that the truth.  But Dean says: “Sounds like there’s a story there.”  And he tries to make it sound casual.

Sam sighs, big like the way he does, and he shrugs, big like the way he does, tilts his head that way he does and he says, “Just.  Crap.  You know?  Got into some trouble as a kid... It doesn’t matter.  I couldn’t afford it anyway.  State school for me.”

Couldn’t afford it?  Like no-permanent-address-Sam _could_?  The only thing different that Dean can think of, other than _everything_ , is that this Sam didn’t have -- didn’t have Dean and Dad shoving him into hunting, training, spurring him into writing every friggin’ essay and probably making every contact he could in that California school any second they didn’t have their eyes on him just to ensure his escape.  This Sam had been perfectly happy to settle -- inside him, the memories of that other Dean bubble up.

Dad vanishing whenever they passed through Kansas, even after Sam would have graduated high school.  Kansas.  Sam had stayed in Kansas.  Sam hadn’t left whatever family he’d made for himself there.  They hadn’t driven him away.

Well.  Awesome.  Good for him.

“Kansas State?”

Sam frowns at him, eyebrow up.  “Yeah.  I’m in grad school for clinical counseling.”

“Like psychology?”

“Yeah, like psychology.”  Sam says it quiet, looks off and drinks his beer.  

Dean ignores the little echo of his old Sam in this new young version, the brief flash of depth there of a life Dean knows nothing about.  He should have given himself a couple of weeks to research in addition to drinking and errands before Cold Oak.

“Seems like a waste of a good pre-law education,” he says instead.

“I think your psychic thing is a little hay-wire, dude.”

“You weren’t pre-law,” Dean guesses.

“No.  Writing.  It’s just a hobby now.”

Dean remembers now, finding little stories with A’s written across the tops of them in teacher-red, comments like “good imagination!” and “wonderful!”  Ten year old Sam had written about their lives and passed it as fiction to clueless teachers.  He’d gotten those A’s he so loved.

“Writing huh?  What kind of stuff?”

Sam shrugs.  “My life.  Fictionalized, of course.  Just short stories.”

“Not horror stories?  Monster stuff?”  At Sam’s blank look, Dean tries, his voice unexpectedly high: “Supernatural?”

Sam frowns.  “Uh... no.  I’m not really into Twilight or whatever.  Reality’s intense enough, thanks.”

Dean tries not to be hurt by it, but he realizes now that he’d been hoping that on some level, Sam had some unexplainable draw toward the gritty horror, the macabre, ghosts and ghouls, blood and heroics.  Winchesters.

But this Sam doesn’t trifle himself with made up terrors.   _Reality’s enough_ he says, and Dean makes it a point to go digging when this Yellow Eyed bastard crap is taken care of.

“So what’s your name,” Dean asks.

Sam looks at him.  Because he doesn’t trust Dean.  And why would he?  But he says, “Sam Easton.  Why?”

Dean shrugs.  “Maybe I’ll call you if I need some help.”

“On a hunt?” Sam asks, too eager.

“Maybe.”  Never.  Ever.  Ever.  “Okay.  Test time,” Dean says.  “Go get Jake.”

Andy refuses to be left behind, but he also refuses to get out of the car when they get to the abandoned field.  They practice loading and unloading the shotguns Dean has brought, taking shots at pop can targets.  Soldier boy Jake gives pointers, but he’s more comfortable with a pistol.  Sam is slower than both of them, but he’s mechanically perfect, a quick study.  Dean makes him go through the motions again and again, and Sam doesn’t complain, just gets faster and faster and is completely OCD about it.  Dean can see the echo in him, where his Sam would get so focused on a case, and his notes would be meticulous, and his ability to count off seconds and turns and sense directions all while blindfolded had saved his life more than once.  They are the same Sam, deep down.

“You’re gonna shoot a dude,” Dean says.

Sam nods.

“You’re going to take a life.  You have to be okay with that.”

Jake is standing behind Dean, nodding.  He’s on the “expert” side of this lesson; Sam is the civilian.  Andy watches from the safety of the car.

“I’m okay with that,” Sam says dutifully.

“Even if it’s just a demon--” Dean warns.

“I’m okay with it,” Sam says again.  “I’m okay with killing evil bastards.”

 

* * *

 

Everything goes wrong.

Dean should have expected it, but he’s focused on Sam, on the grim determination, on the almost eager way he’s got his shotgun in his hands, unpracticed and too tight, and Dean has already told him twice that he’s going to lose feeling in his hands if he doesn’t relax a little.

Sam does not relax.

Jake is at the devil’s gate with a pistol, not the Colt, and he complains loudly that it isn’t working, and on cue, the Yellow-Eyed bastard shows up.  But Dean hasn’t anticipated the muttered words, the quiet look of destruction spreading over Jake’s face as he pivots toward where Dean and Sam are hiding.

He turns on them.  

It’s slow-motion to Dean, but it still all happens too fast.  Jake tosses his own pistol aside to launch at Dean, who loses the Colt in the process.  The soldier hits like a friggin’ wall, and Dean can tell a rib is broken just from the tackle.

Sam shouts.  Dives for the Colt.  Jake leaves Dean in the grass to race for it, and they meet over it, rolling, and Jake comes out on top, dragging Sam up, Sam’s arm in his grip and Jake throws his weight into the next hit, into the softness of Sam’s chest, just under the collarbone.  Sam’s back arches as he screams, and Dean can hear the pop of the dislocation, the crack of ribs, or maybe he can just feel it sick in his gut, because he knows this kid, his Sam or not.  And Jake is throwing his weight into another swing --

\-- And then Andy is shrieking as he stumbles toward them _stop stop!_ and they all do.  They have no choice.

And Sam is gasping and clutching at his shoulder, his arm still twisted in Jake’s grip, and Jake is frozen over him, and Dean is staring at Andy, and the Yellow-Eyed bastard is watching.  And the Yellow-Eyed bastard snaps his fingers, and Jake is moving again.  Drops Sam into the grass where Sam curls up.  Jake gets to his feet, stalks toward Andy.  Says he doesn’t want to do this.  But they have my family.  Just go easy, Andy, I’ll make it quick.

Andy is crying, and commanding, and Jake fights through each command, and Dean watches as they skill up right in front of him, each the grit that sharpens the other, and Sam is shouting for Jake to stop, for Andy to run back to the car, but Andy stands his ground.

Jake takes him by the throat.

And Andy is gurgling in the grass a moment later, and Sam is on his feet again, and he’s got Jake’s forgotten pistol, and there’s a shot.

And Jake is thumping to the ground, a hole in his chest.

And Sam turns to the Yellow-Eyed Demon, one arm hanging limp, Jake’s pistol gripped tight, and he is stalking toward the bastard.

“You did this,” Sam is saying, shaking.  This Sam will go into shock soon.  This Sam isn’t a fighter.  This Sam has never had to fix his own dislocated shoulder or stitch his own bloody gashes.  “You did this to us,” he says again.

The Yellow-Eyed Demon smiles.  “Oh Sam.  You always were the favorite.  You got that fire in your belly.  Hang onto it.”

“I’m not doing anything for you.”

“Everything you’ve ever done has been for me,” the bastard laughs.  “You’ve been mine since before you were born.”

Sam’s face is drawn in hopelessness.  “No.”

“Yes, oh yes.  I’ve pulled a lot of strings to get you here, to this place, this darkness inside you.”

Sam stumbles and wisely chooses to stop trying to walk.  He’s only a step away from the demon anyway.  “No.”

“Dr. Easton?  Abby?  Precious little Valentine?  Did you think they were all accidents?”

Dean watches in horror as the names of these complete strangers send streams of tears down Sam’s face.  “That’s not possible.”

“Becky?  Mr. Turner?”

“Sam?” Dean tries.  

Sam shakes his head, steadies his hand.  But he’s gnawing on his lip to keep from just breaking down and he’s blinking away these terrible rolling tears of grief and it doesn’t matter how close he is, there’s no way he can get a shot off before the demon reacts, even if Jake’s gun could take the demon out.  Dean reaches toward the Colt on the ground, wills Sam to keep the attention on himself.

“My favorite little puppet,” the demon says, “all grown up.  And I have plans for you.  It’s time to put all that anger to use.   _Sammy_.”

Sam’s hand shakes and his face is anger and revulsion and he takes a step and the gun is an arrow straight at the demon’s heart, the shaking barrel of it grazes the demon’s shirt as it wavers there, and Sam’s voice when he says, “Don’t call me that.”

The demon laughs, a belly laugh that throws his head back and Sam closes his eyes, Dean can see it as he swoops up to sitting and he wonders if Sam knows Dean’s plan, if Sam has an instinct for what Dean will do in a given situation, and Dean takes aim with the Colt, and the demon jolts as the bullet slams through his skull.  

The demon drops to his knees, and slumps over, and Dean is on his feet to catch Sam as he falters backward, pale and shaking and in shock.

It all goes wrong.  And two of those kids are dead.  But Sam is alive, and the demon is dead, and Dean is going to give it a day before he says goodbye to Sam forever.

Because just now, Sam is sobbing into his chest and shaking and gritting his teeth and neither of them are ready to go off on their own just yet.

Dean is going to give it a day.

And then he is going to say goodbye to Sam.


	3. Chapter 3

** **

**Episode 903**  
" **Little Orphan Sammy"  
Chapter Three**

"I want to go with you."

Sam looks better after sleep. His arm is in a sling and he slept most of the night through in the bed next to Dean's. Dean frowns at him, one hand on his own broken ribs. Sam looks better and eager and like the sun shines out of his ass and Dean is in trouble.

"No."

"Why not?"

"You're going back to school."

"Says who?"

"Me."

Sam makes a face like, _oh really, and who are you?_ "I can't go back to school and pretend I don't know about this whole monsters thing. I can help you. We can be like... like..."

"An awesome monster-fighting duo, living on the road out of motels, finding work where we can and saving people?"

"It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that."

Dean laughs, which just pisses Sam off more. A little cloud over his head. Dean laughs again and holds his aching ribs. It hurts.

"I'm serious, Dean."

God it sounds so much like Sammy. _It hurts_.

"I know you are. But you aren't coming."

Sam shakes his head. "Listen man. There's nothing for me in Kansas."

Dean nods at Sam's hand. "You got a wife."

Sam looks stricken. Makes a fist with his left hand around the ring on his finger. "She- She's dead. Abby."

 _Abby_ , the demon had said. Shit. This isn't part of his plan. There isn't supposed to be any "get Sam back into hunting" crap if Sam was never a hunter. There aren't supposed to be these names that break Sam like Jess did. Like Brady did. And now that Sam is a normal kid, there are so many more names, so many more people he had come to love, who had come to die or betray him because of this demon.

This is what Dean has given Sam. It doesn't feel like a success.

"Damn. I'm sorry."

"And our daughter, Valentine. She was three months old. A year ago now."

 _A year ago when Dad died_ , the Dean inside him realizes. Dean is seized with sudden clarity. Dad had gone to help Sam, even when Sam didn't know who he was. Dad had died trying to save Sam's family, and none of them but Sam had survived.

"That demon killed them," Sam says, standing. The grief is still apparent; no one has told this kid to shove it down like a Winchester. But he's got steel in his spine. "He killed them all because of me. If there are more things like him out there, I want to be the last thing they see."

"You don't know what you're saying," Dean says. "You don't want this."

"What else is there to want?" Sam is breathing hard now, that whole body heaving he does when he's about to throw a tantrum. "You don't get it. I can never be normal."

"I get it-"

"How? Who the hell are you? And don't tell me you're one of us psychic kids or whatever. You're not the right age, and you definitely didn't show up when the rest of us did."

"How did you-"

"Know you were full of it? I got a knack. So who are you?"

Dean shakes his head. "No one. Trust me. I'm no one."

 

* * *

 

Dean tries to leave three times. But Sam is on top of him each time, and it's increasingly apparent that the kid isn't going to let him go.

Dean seriously considers leaving the life, if only to keep Sam from hunting and making the whole deal with Death thing pointless. As of this moment, the Yellow-Eyed demon is dead, and Dean hasn't gone to Hell, and Sam is in the clear.

And then Sam is gone.

It's been a week of Sam living in his pockets, pestering him to teach him how to shoot, how to track demons, what kind of ghosts there are and how can you kill them. He's practically a puppy and this younger version still has those terrible eye-things that make you want to give him whatever he wants, and that's hard to resist when Dean thinks about his own thirty year old broken down brother - _there is no thirty year old broken down Sam anymore, that's the point._

But then Sam is gone. And there's a note.

_I'll be back for dinner. Don't GO anywhere. I'll just track you down._

And Dean smiles because it's true that Sam will try, but he won't succeed. And this is the perfect time to skip town, so he packs his stuff up, days of living in one place have him spread out all over the room.

It's when he grabs his toothbrush out of the bathroom that he stops and stares, gasping like his heart is about to give out. There are two toothbrushes, see, and wherever he goes next, there will only ever be one. There will only ever be one.

_There will only ever be one. Get used to it. This is what you asked for. You don't have a brother here._

So he's still there, frozen in flash panic in the bathroom, when Sam comes back. He smells like perfume and he's keyed up, excitable, and he's smiling thinly at the partly packed duffel on Dean's bed.

"You know what?" he says. "It's fine. Go if you want. You aren't the only person hunting these things."

Dean frowns from the bathroom doorway. "What does that mean?"

Sam shrugs. "It means, you're not the only person who can teach me. If you don't want me around, that's fine. I'll find someone else."

That's no good. "No, no no don't do that."

"Why not? Give me one good reason to stay around here while you refuse to tell me anything I want to know."

"Sam-"

"Okay then. I'm out."

"I'm your brother!"

Sam stares. Dean shoves the toothbrush back into the cup in the bathroom. This is defeating the purpose. But there's still a chance. There's a chance that Sam will cling to family and if it means Dean leaves the life, fine.

_What happened to not having a brother here? Who's clinging to who again?_

"My - what?"

"Brother. I know how it sounds, but-"

Sam makes a face. "I don't have a brother."

"Sam, this is going to be hard to hear, but... you're adopted."

Sam blinks. "What?'"

"Our dad gave you up for adoption. Your parents aren't your parents."

Sam rolls his eyes. "I _know_ I'm adopted. I'm saying-" He takes a breath. "My brother died in a housefire."

Dean closes his eyes. Dammit. "That's what they told you? No man, I got you out. Dad gave you to me and told me to get out."

Sam frowns.

"Dude, I'm your brother, dammit. What do I have to do to prove it?"

Sam scowls. "How the hell should I know? I was like six months old. It's not like I can ask you something only my brother would know. You could say anything."

"Did someone come to you, try to help when your wife and kid-"

"What?"

"Did someone come to help you? Did he die?"

Sam blows out a frustrated breath, rolls his eyes. "There was some guy, yeah. A bystander. He pulled me out of the house-"

"Jesus, another fire?"

Sam nods. "He went back in for Abby and Tiny. He didn't make it."

"That was my dad. _Our_ dad. He's been watching out for you. Mom died and he didn't want to drag you everywhere. He thought you'd have a better life with someone ... else. Just, anyone else."

"Yeah?"

Dean nods.

"Well that turned out great."

"What?"

"Nothing. Nevermind." Sam is packing his own stuff now, what little he has, into the backpack he had with him in Cold Oak.

"Sam? Don't go. Please."

Sam stops. Sighs. "Fine. But you're gonna teach me to hunt."

"Fine. Whatever. Just stay."

Sam turns and sits on his bed, little pressed line on his face, rolls his eyes like _why do I put up with this?_ and then he says, "I'm still not sure I believe this brother thing."

Dean shrugs. "Give it some time, maybe." He sits on his own bed, both of them with their partly packed bags, not going anywhere. Dean contemplates finding the porn on the TV, but this Sam doesn't seem like he's cool with that, so he just flips through channels with the TV on mute.

"So like," Sam says. "What's your actual name?"

"Dean Smith, I told you."

"Or just lie to me then. That's fine."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Dean Winchester."

"Weird name."

"It's your name too, idiot."

"That's the way you talk to your brother?"

"Yeah, it is. Go ahead and call me a jerk. You'll feel better."

Sam frowns. "Jerk," he says, and smiles. "You know what, I _do_ feel better."

"Jesus, you're definitely Sam," Dean grumbles, but he's smiling too.

"What?"

"Nothing."

And then, wistfully, Sam says: "Man it would have been nice to have had a brother."

"Oh yeah?"

"I coulda used you."

Sam's looking off, a million miles away, face hidden from Dean, but he sounds so much like Dean's old broken Sam that it physically hurts. There's that waver in his voice. With old Sam, he'd have left it alone unless it was important, unless it immediately impacted Sam's knife's-edge mental stability or the case they were working. But here, there's no case that isn't "how to keep Sam safe." So Dean gets up, gets him a beer, and says: "What happened?"

"Just... the foster system."

Dean frowns. The foster system is definitely not part of the deal. "Foster? But you were a baby. I thought people murder each other to get their hands on a baby."

"They do," Sam says. He drinks. "They did. I got adopted like, immediately. Fastest in and out of the whole joint, so the story goes."

"So?"

"So... a couple of months in, the mom got -" He shakes his head, shrugs like _get this_ and Dean's heart fuck. "Mauled by wild dogs."

Dean makes a face.

"She died. The dad gave me back."

"Gave you back? What kind of low-life-"

"I don't know, Dean. Maybe the same kind of low-life who doesn't want to raise an infant by himself? Maybe the kind of guy who doesn't want to do it while mourning his dead wife? Sound familiar?"

"Okay, okay. Sheesh. Nothing changes. So then what?"

"So then, I got adopted again, and..."

"What?"

"The dad got killed in a car accident driving me to the doctor. Dead. Me? Not a scratch. The mom-"

"Gave you back, right. Jesus kid."

"After that, no one wanted me. I was cursed. So, enter the foster system."

"You're not cursed."

"I know."

"It was the demon-"

"I _know_. I know that now." Sam turns on the bed to face Dean. "You have to understand why I want to learn to do what you do. You save people. _I_ need to save people. I have stuff to make up for."

Dean shakes his head, pulls over the little motel brochure to look at food options. "You didn't kill anyone-"

"I killed Jake."

"For Andy."

"Andy was already dead. That was revenge."

"Jake would have come after you or me next. It was self-defence. What do you want to eat?"

"I'm not hungry."

"Chef salad it is."

"I said I'm not hungry-"

"I'm not doing this with you, Sam. Forget about Jake, okay? Just trust me, it was self-defence. That demon killed all those other people, so he could use them against you. You didn't kill anyone."

"Don't talk about me like you know me. You don't know anything."

Dean shrugs and dials the phone. "Fine. I don't know anything." He orders a chef salad, because even if it's not Sam's favorite, it's something he likes that you wouldn't guess from looking at him, so _there_ asshole, and a couple of burgers for himself, and he hangs up the phone and tries not to roll his eyes at how Sam doesn't look at him and how pink he is, because of course Dean knows him, of course he does. And even if Sam can't know why, he knows there's a chef salad speeding its way toward him right now and he knows he's going to eat every bite.

 

* * *

_There's a copse of trees that means safety, just for a bit, and they stop there, they stop running there, just for a bit. Campfire smoke and "brother" honey-south and that's a lie, that's a comfort, that's a reminder like a constellation in this blood-soaked sky a landmark in this ashen nightmarescape that there is a purpose here, there is a goal. There's a toothbrush in his hand._

"Dean!"

Dean is shaken. Like, hands on his shoulders shaken, but also maybe, a little rattled. He snaps awake and Sam's a girly shriek when Dean pins him to the floor lightning quick.

"Dude, dude it's me!"

Dean peers at him through the dark. "Sam? Jesus, don't do that."

"Sorry-"

"How many times have I told you-"

"What?"

Dean lets him go and sits back against the nightstand between their beds, reaches up to click on the light. And swears. Sam is young, twenty-two, Sam isn't all reflex and instinct. Dean has never told this Sam not to wake him up like that.

Shit. Shit. How could he have forgotten?

Dean scrubs his face. Sam sits up, rubbing at his shoulder where Dean's fingers had dug in. Where just a week before, Jake had practically torn his arm from the socket.

"Sorry."

"You okay?" Sam says. It doesn't seem like he holds it against Dean, or maybe this is another thing his Sam and this Sam have in common; neither likes to show that Dean has hurt him, neither likes to show that anything has hurt him until it can't be ignored, can't be fixed.

"I'm fine."

"Lie to me some more."

"I'm _fine_ , Jesus kid."

"You were talking in your sleep."

Dean frowns. "What'd I say?" He'd just had this conversation with Sam, his Sam. _The Sam that doesn't exist anymore._

"Something about a campfire. And a toothbrush?"

Dean laughs it off. "What can I say? I'm really anal about my camping supplies."

Sam is serious. Sam doesn't just trust him the way he should, the way that other Sam would - Sam says, "Right. Camping supplies. You sounded like you were dying."

Dean shrugs. "Hunting isn't easy. Just another reason you should stay out of it."

Sam shakes his head. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing." Dean looks at Sam. Sam doesn't back off, doesn't say anything, just waits. "I had a hunting partner. We got separated during a hunt. I went through hell to get back to him, like 24/7 monsters trying to chomp my ass, but when I found him again, he'd moved on. Found someone else."

Sam narrows his eyes. "Are you gay? It's okay if you are. I just don't want to be a jerk without thinking."

"I'm not gay, dude. He was my hunting partner, he was supposed to have my back."

"Sounds like a real winner."

Dean watches Sam, watches him watch Dean, looking for something. Sam has only known he has a brother for about six hours, but the depth of the concern he has for Dean is apparent, overwhelming. This is another thing Dean thinks this Sam has in common with his Sam. He's a girl when it comes to caring, and he gives zero fucks about what you think about it. Caring is one of those standard Sam things.

Dean clears his throat, Sam is still watching him. "Yeah. He was the best."

 

* * *

 

They go on like that for another week. Dean takes Sam out shooting. Sam is a natural, if a little stiff, mechanical. He goes out some nights, comes home smelling like perfume. This Sam is a little more willing to chat up the ladies, it seems, and that makes sense. This Sam is a lot more out-going than Dean's old broken Sam. He'd had practice making friends as a side effect of staying in more or less one place for more than a month at a time. He'd been willing and able to get a girl to marry him when they were both still in college.

There's a pang in Dean's heart to think of it. He doesn't know Abby, the other Dean inside him had never met her, but he remembers Jess' face in her stead, and he thinks of a tiny little girl named Valentine with Sam's eyes and a heart-shaped face who should have been able to grow up and call him Uncle Dean.

But that would have defeated the purpose.

Anyway, Sam comes home for the fourth night in a row smelling like a girl has climbed all over him, and Dean has to say something, has to rib him. Has to be his brother just for a moment, _and then he'll stop, he swears_.

Because half-confession or not, he needs to get this Sam off hunting and leave him in the dust, ASAP. And that doesn't happen if they start _bonding_ or whatever.

Sam only smiles like he's shy and doesn't want to talk about it, but he goes into the shower for a long time and he's singing in there. Dean grins as he goes, but once the bathroom door is closed, Dean frowns and he flips through the shitty cable.

Because Dean has been doing some digging. And Dean has found the story on the housefire that killed Sam's wife and kid. And Dean has found an article about the death of Dr. Robert Easton, who was survived by his son, Sam, aged nineteen. Killed by the demon, Dean has no doubt. But Sam had said he was in foster care forever, and his cursory research into Dr. Easton as a person revealed only that he had never adopted before Sam or after, that Sam was a special case. He finds sealed court records that will take time to fake open.

And Dean intends to find out why, the next time Sam takes a long evening with his little lady on the side. And Dean intends to find out just who Becky and Mr. Turner are too, and every other little terrible thing in Sam's life, a stubbed toe, an F on a paper, whatever.

Dean needs to know.

Because he's paying for this new start with the only thing he has, and if it goes the way it's supposed to, he'll leave Sam someday soon and never see him again. Dean needs to know that Sam is going to be fine. He needs his money's worth.

Sam comes out of the shower dripping wet with a towel around his waist. He's less and less shy around Dean, he's taken to calling him "bro," which Dean hates. But he can see Sam's testing the water, feeling the word, trying Dean out. Sam is as starved for family as Dean is.

"I need more shirts," he says, toweling his hair.

"You have like three."

"The one I got kidnapped in and the two you stole from the dime store across the street," Sam says. "Three shirts does not a wardrobe make."

"Fine. We'll go shopping, princess."

"My hero," Sam says sweetly, and throws the towel wet from his hair at Dean.

"When do I get to meet your lady friend?" Dean asks.

Sam freezes with his back turned, reaching for the only clean shirt he has. He picks it up after a moment and says, "I don't know. She's kinda like. Shy."

Dean frowns. _His_ Sam had terrible luck with girls and how they were mostly evil. "Shy?"

"Yeah. Shy."

"Okay..."

"You'll meet her when the time is right, okay? I mean, I just met _you_." Sam's cell phone rings then and he shrugs, giddy grin all over. It's her, obviously. "One sec," he says to Dean and turns away to answer, taking his jeans and underoos to the bathroom for privacy. "Hey! Yeah, of course. Yeah, I know!" He closes the door and his bubbling laugh is muffled like Dean has been entombed.

Dean frowns. Whatever.

That night, Sam sleeps sound again. It's always a toss-up with him. Sleep and Sam, dysfunctional in any universe, apparently. But tonight, he's out like a light. Dean slips from his bed and reaches for Sam's cell phone on the nightstand. With a couple of button presses, he finds Sam's mysterious girlfriend is listed in his phone only as "R" and Dean presses his lips together.

They train a little the next day. Sam is a crack shot after a week of practicing, more accurate than precise, but admirable for beginner who, as far as Dean can tell from his stiff stance, had never held a gun before Dean had handed him one in a field just after Cold Oak. Sam's excited and a little bloodthirsty, and he asks if they can go on a real hunt. He's found a demon, and he wants to take it out. He's practiced the exorcism. He's ready.

He's not ready. He should never be ready. Dean isn't going to take him on a hunt. He says as much. And if he has to keep making excuses until Sam isn't interested anymore, he will.

But Sam just looks disappointed and distraught and he isn't getting less interested, he's getting more eager, and Dean needs a new plan. But Sam says, "All right. Whatever. I'm going out."

"With R?"

Sam looks at him, wounded, betrayed. "Yeah. And you need to stay out of my phone."

So Dean takes it easy tonight and doesn't follow Sam. Instead, he pries into Sam's history. He tries the "googling" thing his own Sam keeps suggesting ( _he suggests it with a laugh, he is smiling and he is sunlit and he doesn't care about his own life, he is broken and he will be fixed, if Dean can keep his shit together and give him up, because he doesn't exist anymore. Stop talking about him like he does_ ).

Dean googles "Sam Easton." But Sam wasn't an Easton before the good doctor adopted him. The earliest hits are all articles about the doctor's death and Sam is present only by virtue of having survived him. Dean clicks through a couple of hits that look like publications, short stories by Sam, mostly to do with young men moving on after their fathers die, some dark shit that makes Dean worry a little, stories of addiction and obsession that Dean hopes fall into the "fictionalized" category. But Sam seems to have really loved Dr. Easton, and one of the dedications at the bottom of a story is full of "this man saved my life" kind of stuff. (It makes Dean feel ill to think someone else was "dad" to Sam, someone else was family.)

Dean googles "Sam" "Becky". Nothing. Or rather, too much, too many results for strangers. Dean googles "Sam" "Turner". Nothing, or too much. He googles "Turner" "Kansas".

And there's something. Dean reads through it. It's vague. No names beyond Ed Turner's. It might not even be related to Sam. But there's something about a disturbance and foster children, and the date puts Sam at around eight. There's not enough to go on, the story has been sanitized of detail and the names of any minors, and Dean clicks through any related links or additional articles, and there's just. Nothing.

Dean tries to dig into that other memory he has, that other Dean whose body he's taken, for hints about where Dad might have been when Sam was eight. Seven. Eight. Anything?

Anything? Yeah, there's everything this other Dean shoves at him, an attempt to claw his way out into his own body, but Dean is too driven for that. Instead, he is forced to sift through this other Dean's memories, and he sifts.

And Dad is not the Dad Dean wants to remember. Dad without Sam is-

Dad without Sam isn't Dad.

Dad without Sam is a man who gets into bar fights and makes Dean stitch him up, a man who gets arrested for stupid shit and makes Dean bail him out, makes Dean spent hours alone in a motel room worrying that his Dad won't be back this time. A man who fights with Pastor Jim about what Dean should and shouldn't see. A man for whom Dean is a target when he's drinking, a man who blames someone who isn't there, who talks in his sleep and mumbles _Mary Mary what have I done_.

And then yeah, Dean remembers this phantom memory like it's his own _but it isn't, it isn't yours_. He's twelve. He's dumped in Minnesota with Pastor Jim. He's alone and bored and Dad is gone for like a week, and when he comes back, he drinks for another two, and he's mean and roaring and he cries in afternoons when the boys from across the lake are diving from the docks shouting and laughing, and no, he's not the Dad he wants to remember. Dad without Sam isn't Dad.

And there in Minnesota, Dean's locked up in the spare room Pastor Jim keeps for him, and there are shouts and something breaks, and Pastor Jim has a black eye when he comes to see Dean, and his dad is skulking in the doorway and his nose is broken, and he's mean and roaring and he cries and that's the week, that's the week this article comes out.

Dean has to ask. He has to know.

He tracks Sam's cell phone.

To a warehouse, and there's a laugh, and Dean sneaks in and follows the sound, and R stands for Ruby and the bottom drops out of the world.


	4. Chapter 4

** **

**Episode 903  
** " **Little Orphan Sammy"**  
Chapter Four

Dean waits for Sam back at the room. He can't figure out what he's going to say, and he still hasn't worked it out when Sam shows back up, whistling and happy and amped up, and that's so obvious now, what it must be. Why is it always - why always this thing for Sam? This struggle, this poison? Burning houses and demon blood for Sam, fucking written in the stars for Sam.

"Good night?" he asks.

Sam grins. "Yeah."

"Sam. We gotta talk."

Sam stops on his way to the bathroom, another long shower. "About?"

"A couple of things." He still doesn't know how he's going to do this. But he'll start with something that will give him time to think. "I wanna know. About your life."

Sam sinks into the chair at the little desk. Dean can tell this isn't what Sam expected. "My life?"

"Yeah. You said you were in the foster system, and... I guess I feel kinda. Responsible."

Sam laughs, short. "You were like four. Right?"

"Yeah, but I never forgot you." There's something inside him that wants to rush Sam and crush him and never let him go. It's the other Dean, or it's really him, but either way, Dean squelches it down. "I should have tried to find you."

"I don't blame you, Dean," Sam says, and he has sensed the seriousness of the subject, and his voice is so soft and comforting, and Dean thinks this kid will make a great counselor-therapist-whatever, just as soon as Dean can get him off this disastrous path. Just as soon as he can get him away from Ruby.

"I know you don't, Sammy-"

"Please don't-"

"I know. I'm sorry. Sam. I know you don't blame me. But I blame myself. Could you just tell me about it?"

Sam shrugs, but he's looking down and over in that way that he doesn't know Dean knows means he's lying, just a little. "There's nothing to tell. It was crappy. No one wanted me. A million kids across the country have the same sob story. I'm not special."

"You're special, Sam. A demon wanted you to rule his army, special. Don't tell me you had it like everyone else."

Sam frowns. "Can you just respect that I don't want to talk about it?"

"No. No, Sam, I can't. You don't know how far-reaching all this crap is, okay? I do."

"Can it, Dean. I already know you're not psychic, remember?"

"No, I'm not psychic. But I know you aren't like everyone else. I know a demon killed everyone you loved and everyone who ever loved you, I know that demon killed _our_ mother, and pulled a bunch of strings to get you into that graveyard two weeks ago. And I know that Ruby chick is no good."

"Wait a minute. This is about _Ruby_?" Sam stands, throws his hands up. "That's it. I'm out. Brother or not, you're crossing a line, man." He crosses to his bed while Dean says:

"Sam just hold on. Listen to me. I know what I'm talking about. Dr. Easton, Abby, your kid? All the work of demons trying to get you to do something for them. And now this Ruby, let me guess. She's got a surefire way for you to get juiced and all it requires is a little blood drinking."

Sam freezes in place, halfway into shoving crap into his bag.

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"How-"

"Because I know the whole story. And you don't. And you need to listen to me, or this was all for nothing, Sammy, it was for _nothing_ , please God just listen to me. Walk away from her. Walk away from this life for good, right now. Please. Please."

Sam is staring. "What are you talking about."

Dean is desperate. He is begging. "I'm not psychic, Sam. I'm from the future. Kind of. A future where we're brothers, for real. No foster homes, no adoption. You come out on the road with me and Dad and you hunt, and it - it _breaks_ you, Sam. And I can't fix you. I just need you to leave this Ruby chick alone and go back to school and pretend none of this exists. Please."

Sam stares at Dean, disbelieving, processing. "How-"

"Made a deal. With someone powerful." Dean crosses the room. "Changed history, so you wouldn't come out on the road with us. So you didn't have _our_ life. So we weren't brothers. I would do _anything_ to keep what happens to you from happening. This is it, your chance to just be normal. You always wanted to be normal. Trust me, please."

"That's crazy-"

"You're psychic. We just killed a demon with a magic gun. You're downing juice that makes you some sort of freaky demon killer. You think you've reached the bottom of the crazy bag?"

Sam raises a brow, twists his mouth up like, _okay, good point._ "What happens to me?"

Dean shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. I'm not going to let it happen again."

"How can you tell me all of this and then expect me to just go back to school?"

"I don't know. I'm a moron. I didn't mean to tell you, but if it gets you to believe me, I'll do anything."

Sam sits on his bed, half-packed bag forgotten. He's thoughtful, doing math. "Whatever happens, it's bad enough that you'd rather just not be my brother anymore?"

Dean's stomach rolls. God Sammy if that's what you thought-

"No. No. It's not that. Believe me, this is the highest price I could ever pay. But I can survive this if it means you're okay. I just need you to be okay, Sam."

Sam shakes his head. "I'm sorry, Dean," he says. He looks up at Dean there, and he has this little hopeless smile.

"For what?"

Sam shrugs. "Disappointing you. I don't think this worked out the way you planned it."

"What are you talking about? We killed the demon that was making your life hell. Stay away from Ruby and the rest of everything just doesn't happen."

"What about the stuff that's already happened?"

"Listen," Dean says, "I know it sucked. But you can start over. You're twenty two. I'm not saying get over it, but you can still be happy."

"And you're gonna leave me. Alone."

"I don't have to. I'll stop hunting. We'll get a couple of houses right next to each other. Find some ladies, settle down. We'll be brothers. If that's what you want." It's almost too good to be true.

Sam is quiet for a moment. "I don't know what I want. A month ago, this would have all seemed like a stupid tv show premise."

Dean shrugs, remembering when it _was_ , remembering how Sam chose to go back to their real life because they were brothers there, and they meant something there, and oh how Dean hopes this Sam isn't so earnest about saving people or _meaning something_.

"Ruby said something," Sam says then.

"She's a demon, Sam."

Sam blinks at that, then shrugs. "She said it was never going to stop. The things that happen to the people I love. The things that happen to me."

"She's lying-"

"She says what I'm doing - I could stop all this, all this terrible stuff. I can practice, I can save people."

"She's setting you up, man-"

"I'm not saying I _trust_ her. I'm saying... I can _use_ her."

Dean is dizzy. No. Goddammit no. "Sam, dammit-"

"Does this usually work for you? You just bully your Sam into doing what you want?"

Dean stares.

Sam shrugs. "I'm not him, Dean. I'm not your Sam. I can tell you loved him, he must have been a really great person. But he doesn't exist anymore. You're stuck with me. And I have things to make up for, mistakes that have hurt people. That's why I went to grad school. So I could follow in Bob's footsteps, help kids like me. But now I can do so much more. I can save so many more people from more dangerous things. _We_ can. You and me." He lifts a shoulder, like it's this easy: "We'll just be careful."

"Sam, there's no careful for us, okay? We did the best we could and we ended up - _you_ ended up... just-"

"You gave up on me," Sam guesses.

" _You_ gave up on you."

Sam shakes his head. "If I know me, if I'm at all _me_ , I haven't given up. I just don't know how to move forward. I just don't know how to dig myself out. That happened here, too, you know? But I had Bob, my adopted dad. Your Sam had you. And you just gave him up."

"No. No."

Sam's smile is kind. "Dean, it's done now. You have to live with the consequences. You gave me a new life. I gotta live it."

Dean's head is spinning. This isn't how he wanted this conversation to go. This isn't his Sam. This isn't a Sam who is used to being pinned by Dean's anger, a Sam who lets his own rush out of him with a breath until he can't anymore. This Sam has been raised through a tumultuous, apparently, teenagerhood by a loving doctor, a psychologist no less, and all that old soft-spoken Sam trying to get Dean to talk about his troubles is amplified in this Sam in front of him. And he won't let Dean win this fight.

"Please go back to school."

"You don't have any chips at this table, Dean. Sorry."

"You don't know what your life will become."

"So tell me."

"I can't. It's a free will thing."

Sam presses his lips together. "Kind of a fuzzy line."

"I know. I don't make the rules."

"Come with me then. Protect me if it makes you feel better."

"What is so bad that it's worth this risk? What can you possibly have to make up for?"

Sam's little smile fades. "I got a black mark on my soul. Something I can probably never make up for. But I have to try, right? You have to at least know that about me. That seems like an in-born character trait, doesn't it?"

Dean is nodding. Yeah. Yeah. God, Sammy. "I doubt it's as bad as you think."

"I killed someone."

Dean stares.

"Foster father."

"It was an accident-" Dean tries.

Sam is shaking his head.

Dean is putting the puzzle pieces together, the week Dad had lost his shit, the missing details in the newspaper articles. "Mr. Turner," he guesses.

Sam closes his eyes and looks vaguely ill at the name, but he nods his head.

Dean swears. This Sam has had blood on his hands since he was eight years old. At eight, _his_ Sammy had just been figuring out that Santa wasn't real. He can't imagine that skinny kid killing anyone. "That Yellow-Eyed bastard-"

"It wasn't a demon, Dean. He was a - different kind of evil."

"Jesus, Sam." Dean gets up to get them both new beers.

Sam accepts the beer and he's shaking his head. "I don't really wanna talk about it."

"Yeah. My Sam never wanted to talk about crap either."

"That's a lie."

"How would you know?"

"Listen, I might not be _your_ Sam, but I'm still Sam. I know him better than you do, probably. Believe me, I'm a talker."

Dean sits back on his own bed and scrapes at the edge of the label on his beer. He looks away. He knows this. Sam always says he doesn't want to talk about it; Dean has figured out that Sam wants _Dean_ to want to talk about it. He wants Dean to tell him he wants to know. Except for the times Sam really doesn't want to talk. Damned if Dean can tell the difference. He thinks maybe it has something to do with how Sam looks at him when he says it, either not at all or like he's worried about something, versus looking Dean right in the eye and telling him to fuck off.

"You know I'm right," Sam says, peering at him.

Dean nods. "Yeah. I know."

"So?"

Dean looks up at this new younger Sam, this apparently just-as-broken Sam; Sam watches him like whatever he does next is a test. It is a test. Of course it is. Dean says:

"Please tell me about it. Sam. Tell me what happened. I don't believe you're terrible. Or that you have some dark spot on your soul. I just want you to talk to me. Please."

Sam watches him. His eyes are wet, and he's embarrassed but he smiles just a little. And Dean has passed the test.

Sam takes a long draw from his bottle before he begins.

"Okay. Do you know anything about the foster system or-" He can see by Dean's blank face that Dean knows nothing. "Okay. Just know that kids are dicks and so are grown-ups, basically."

"Oh, _that_ I do know."

Sam grins, like he isn't about to launch into a terrible tale of woe. "Good. Okay, so I'm like seven. And all my matches up to now have been just, not great. I'm small and the other kids have bad attitudes and everyone wants to be the favorite, you know, everyone wants to be the kid that gets kept. And prospectives love the little kids, right? They think the little kids need their help so much more, and the kids who are too big for their age or the kids who have some weird issue that isn't even their fault - those kids get dumped. So you're a cute, small kid, like me - don't laugh-"

Dean doesn't laugh. He remembers that cute, small kid, and he never ever wants to remember him into a loveless home where he has to compete to be kept.

"-And all the other kids go out of their way to make you knock things over, or they start fights with you and then run crying like you picked on them, or they steal things to put under your pillow so you'll get caught, or whatever."

"Every kid was like that?"

Sam shrugs. "Not every kid. But it happened. Not fun for any of us. I mean, the bigger or weirder kids, they needed help too, you know? The girl born with the heroine addiction needed way more help than I did, right? But the prospectives don't see it that way. They're going shopping and they want to end up with a good one. It's kinda gross." He drinks. "I'm sure I'm being really unfair to them or whatever-"

Dean nods to show he's listening, but he has no words. This isn't what he'd signed Sam up for. He's itching to make a phone call.

"So when I ended up with the Turners, I thought-" Sam shrugs. "Jackpot, you know? They'd had this girl, Becky, for like two years. And Becky was great. She had this protective older sister thing when it came to me: she guided me through the house rules, and she watched out for me in school. We were like, immediately 'Sam and Becky.' You know?"

Dean swallows. "Yeah, I know the feeling."

"For three or four months, I really felt like that was it. That was going to be home. I warmed up to the mom and dad. Instead of just going along with the rules because I wanted to fit in, I tried to believe they were for the best."

"What kind of rules," Dean asks. His Sam had been rebellious - he believes _all_ Sams are rebels at their core, one of those in-born trait things. Following the rules in order to stay in a family? That's off the radar. And if a different life could change something Dean had thought was so fundamental about Sam, maybe it isn't core to him after all, and maybe his rebellious, traitorous streak is really all about Dean, and their dad, and their terrible, ruinous lives.

"You know, bed by eight. Chores. What and how much we were allowed to talk about the family to others."

"If that's not a red flag-"

"Tell me about it. But I was seven, so." He drinks again. Dean drinks; he wishes it was whiskey. "Anyway, three or four months go by, and it's pretty much awesome. Until it's not. Little things change. The rules change. Sometimes day to day. Homework done by six, then five, then it's impossible to get home and get it done and get into the bath by the right time, and then you're grounded for however long. Becky starts saving her lunch money and refusing to eat. She stops taking baths with me even though it's the only possible way to get it done and avoid getting punished. But you know, she was nine, so I thought, girls are weird. Right?"

It's a lot of detail. Sam seems to react well when Dean just says what's on his mind. So Dean says: "How many times have you told this story?"

Sam smiles a little, brittle. "Three. Once to cops, once to Bob, and once in a short story that'll never be published. Do you want me to stop? Is it super boring?"

"No," Dean rushes in. "No. I just wondered. I can't even remember what I had for lunch yesterday. I'm a little impressed you got all this down."

Sam shrugs. "It's... indelible."

Dean nods. "I get that. Go on."

"Maybe I should stop here-"

"Go on. Please."

Sam swallows, closes his eyes. Dean almost wants to take it back. Maybe this is a time when he should have left it alone. Maybe someday he'll learn the difference. But Sam opens his eyes and he's in the past when he says: "He comes into our room maybe once a week, at first. Then it's twice, or three times. He drags me out of bed, throws me into the closet. Locks the door."

"Jesus-"

"When I figured out what was happening, I fought back. I wanted to protect her, you know? But it always ended with me in the closet, crying or bloody or terrified, and Becky out there, with him. I could hear her, crying, talking to him, begging." Sam pauses. It's like it happened yesterday. This Sam, raised to emote and talk about things, he's even worse than the Sam who begged Dean to vent his feelings about Dad's death. "Sometimes after, she'd come and let me out and we'd sleep in my bed together. Sometimes, I'd stay in the closet and we'd talk through the door. It went on for a _year_."

Dean can guess how this all results in Sam killing this guy. He's tempted to stop this whole terrible thing. It hurts and it's his fault and he doesn't want to hear anything else. But Sam says:

"Want me to stop?"

And that's a test. Dean says: "No."

Sam nods. He's gotten himself together. He's wiped his face dry. "We made a plan to escape."

That's my Sammy.

"It was a stupid plan. We got caught. It was my plan, but she said it was hers. She took the heat for it, and he was so mad. But she told me it was her job to look out for me. That I was her little brother, forever."

"Sammy-"

"Please don't call me that. Only Becky ever called me that."

"Sorry."

 _Not my Sammy. Never my Sammy, not here, never again._ He's breathless, he tries to cover. His heart is racing, and this is a stupid thing to panic about, but it's in his head now, that Sam will never be Sammy. Never doesn't notice.

Sam shrugs. "Anyway, he beat her senseless. I tried to stop him, I did. I tried to tackle him, if you can picture that. I was just this tiny thing, trying to stop this mountain of a man. I bit, scratched, kicked, anything, just to get him off of her. Finally, he had enough." Sam frowns at nothing, memory. "He turned on me. He picked me up by my shirt and threw me on the bed. Said it was time I learned respect, what a fucking cliche-" Sam stops, his head swaying loose in that familiar expression of shame and hopelessness Dean remembers and hates. "I stabbed him through the neck with a pair of scissors."

Dean pictures eight year old Sam, a kid he'd tucked in at night, a kid he'd guarded with every breath, a kid he'd made spaghettios for and stolen ice cream for - spattered in the blood of an abusive dick he'd killed with his own hands.

"We wanted to stay together," Sam says, subdued. "But we weren't blood related, so she got fostered out again, and I had to go to a..."

"A... looney bin for kids?"

Sam looks like he might take offense for a moment, then he shrugs. "Basically. For a few years. But... good grades, mitigating circumstances... I didn't get fostered again, but my doctor pulled a personal favor and was allowed to adopt me."

"Dr. Easton."

Sam nods.

"And Becky? You ever meet her for playdates?"

Sam pulls from the bottle before answering. "She's dead. Killed herself three months after we were split up."

"Jesus, Samm- er. Sorry."

"She's still with me," Sam says then, looking up like he can see the sky through the ceiling. Tears glint in his eyes and he seems almost happy. "She's at peace. She forgives me."

"Forgives you? Sammy, you killed the guy who hurt her. You're a hero."

"No," Sam says, and he's back to earth and his mouth is bitter-full. "I saved _myself_. I let her suffer for a _year_ without doing something. I didn't act until it was my ass on the line."

"You were _eight_."

"So? I killed a guy. 'You were eight' doesn't seem to apply to me."

"Sammy-"

"Becky was only there because that demon wanted to screw with me, Dean. Ed Turner was there because of me, maybe _for_ me. He got to her because of me, he hurt her because of me. And you know, maybe if I hadn't hauled off and stabbed him, they'd have listened to us when we said we wanted to go together. Maybe I wouldn't have been shipped off to some juvie looney bin. I would have _been_ there, to stop her, to stop her from-"

"Sammy, Jesus. You aren't responsible for something a demon does, okay? You can't-"

"Would this have worked with Sam you knew? Talk until he gives up and agrees with you?"

No. Dean didn't pass the test often enough for them to talk shit out. "We don't really talk like this."

"Good. Because you're not great at it."

"Yeah, thanks." Dean drinks his beer. "Listen, I'm sorry you got a bad shake, and I'm sorry it was my fault. But you don't know what I saved you from. You have no idea what my Sammy went through."

Sam's quiet a moment. "I guess he lets you call him 'Sammy,' huh."

"The way you were Sam and Becky? That was me and Sam."

"And you gave it up?"

"If there was any other way-"

"Maybe you just didn't look hard enough."

"What-?"

"Did you even ask him if this is what he wanted?"

"He wouldn't have gone along with it."

"You're damn right, he wouldn't."

"You think you got it all figured out, don't you. But you don't know-"

"You keep saying that!"

"Fine. Screw the rules. You go to hell, Sam!"

" _You_ go to hell-" Sam says, looking every bit annoyed twenty-two year old Sam, bitchy face and all.

"I _do_. We both do, literally. Sam." Dean takes a breath. "You go to hell. For centuries. And you're so broken when we get you out."

Sam stops, he's thinking, he's worried. "Why- What'd I do?"

Dean shrugs. "Stopped the apocalypse. You took on Satan, man, and you trapped him with you in this cage-"

"Why... why wouldn't we figure out some other way?"

"You wanted to do it." It's painful and he doesn't want to say it, in case it might drive Sam further away, but Dean hopes the shock will steer him clear of the whole business when he says: "You let Lucifer out in the first place."

Sam doesn't believe him. Dean can see him fight through _Lucifer's real?_ to get to: "Why would I do that? I wouldn't _do_ that."

"You thought you had to. You did what you thought you had to to ... to stop what _I_ started. But it was a trick. You aren't evil, and you aren't bad. This isn't inside you. I'm saying, I'm saying whatever you think you're doing that's good, they're going to twist it, Sam. You're going to feel like you're doing the right thing, and it'll be playing into their hands. You need to walk away."

"So I won't let Lucifer out-"

"It won't be that simple. It's never that simple. But you're safe for now, just walk away. Look, I never went to hell here, I never broke the first seal."

"Why'd you go to hell?"

"Jesus-"

"Dean, why?"

"Because you die at Cold Oak, Sam! Jake kills you at Cold Oak. You die in my arms, and I make a deal with a demon, my soul for your life. And we get a year before it comes due, and I break the first fucking seal and some angel brings me back, and it's all downhill from there, okay? Just trust me. Whatever you try to do, it's going to go wrong. They're going to twist it, lie to you, something. Get out, go home, go back to school, lay low. You can still be happy, Sam."

Sam is thinking; Sam is quick. Dean knows Sam isn't finished with this, but what he says in order to buy himself time to process is: "Angels are real? Seriously?"

And Dean wants to laugh hysterical, until he hears a voice behind him say: "Very real."


	5. Chapter 5

** **

**Episode 903**  
" **Little Orphan Sammy"  
Chapter Five**

The lights are flickering and the TV is static and Cas is standing there, his trench coat looking super new, Cas looking super friggin' scary with his shadowy sparking wings filling the space from wall to wall of their motel room. God, Dean's forgotten how impressive the light show is. Sam stares, steps backward, suitably terrorized.

"Cas," Dean says.

Cas stops short. "I am Castiel," he says. "I'm an angel of the Lord-"

Just as Dean is saying, "Angel of the Lord, yeah yeah got it. But what are you doing here?"

"You'd do well to show me some respect-"

"Jesus, _yes_ , fine. Oh God I'm so terrified. Now what are you _doing_ here?"

Cas looks astounded that anyone would talk to him like this. He looks confused, concerned, maybe a bit turned on. Jeez.

"There is work for you."

Dean's smile fades. What? _What?_

"There are Seals-"

"No." Dean sinks to the bed. He's aware that Sam is fading back, watching. Everything they've just talked about - now it doesn't even matter whether Sam leaves the life, goes back to school. Dammit, no. "How. But the first Seal. How?"

"How do you know about that?" Cas says, eyes narrowed in that constipated way.

"It was supposed to be me. I don't-"

"How do you know about this?" Cas looks at Sam accusingly, menacingly.

Sam shrugs, big. "Don't look at me. I just found out hell really exists."

Cas considers Sam, looks him up and down, takes a step toward Sam, who glances at Dean but doesn't back away. "Of course. You wouldn't remember."

"Remember what?" Dean says. He stands when he sees Cas taking an interest. Sure, back where Dean is from, Cas can't get enough Sammy time, but this Cas thinks Sam is some evil creature waiting to happen, an abomination from infancy. Dean steps between them. "Remember _what._ "

"The deal your father made for Sam's life."

"What," Dean says, and Sam says, "How do you know my name?"

And Castiel says, "Sam Easton. John Winchester sold his soul to save your life a year ago-"

"The fire," Sam says.

Dean swears. Dad broke. Dad broke on Alastair's rack. And inside him, the other Dean is saying Dad had nothing to live for, not really, he's been distant for months, he was a shell of a man. Of course he broke.

Sam looks at Dean. "Your dad broke the first Seal? So it's going to happen?"

Cas looks at Dean as well. "What do you know about this?"

"You gotta help us, Cas. You gotta snap out of this dick-mode or whatever. We're friends, okay? And this is gonna go downhill _fast_. Your angel bosses are playing you, and-"

There's a flash of white and Dean is sick as the images snap through him. Cas takes Sam and leaves. Dean hunts them down. Seals are breaking. Dean finds them, only to find Sam strung out on demon blood and Ruby leading him around, and he sees Uriel and Ruby talking, and he sees Uriel and Cas fighting. Cas, hunting down Sam. And he sees Sam trying to off himself, because he doesn't want to do what they're making him do, and he sees Sam lucid and trembling, checking himself into a locked ward where he can dry out, where he might be safe, and he sees Sam's door mysteriously unlock and all his paths are clear and he escapes despite himself. And he sees that without the knowledge that Lilith _is_ the seal, Sam breaks it in the end anyway. He thinks he's doing what needs to be done. Again.

And Dean shouts, all of this is in his head, flashes that feel real, and he shouts for Death and he falls to his knees.

And he is in that white room.

"So sorry," Death says. "I had to give you a little shove. I've got a dinner date."

"What?"

"You wanted to see how it played out, yes?"

Dean stands. He feels unsteady. He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again, twice. "That was all just a dream?"

"Oh no. It was very real. Your little angel friends might dabble in heaven visions and dream futures, but rest assured. What you have just experienced is one hundred percent exactly just reality playing itself out after your little tweak."

"So Sam's gone. My Sam."

Death shrugs. "Would you like a do-over?"

"You can do that?"

"Dean. Please."

"Okay." Dean thinks. "Sam gets adopted right away, into a family that doesn't die off, and he gets a happy childhood."

Death presses his lips together. "That's extremely unlikely."

"Careful, I'm starting to think you're not all-powerful."

Death makes a prissy little face and twiddles his fingers, mostly for show, Dean thinks. And Dean sees:

_Sam is happy, a happy baby, a happy boy, he excels in school, his parents love him, he goes to college, he's not interested in writing, but he'd love to be a firefighter, Sam dies saving a family of three, John makes a deal to save him, Sam is abducted to Cold Oak-_

"Okay, enough. Sam doesn't die, Dad doesn't make a deal for him. Good family, and me at Cold Oak."

"You're asking an awful lot."

But Dean sees:

_Good family, Sam doesn't die, but his best friends and girlfriend are killed in this fire when he's in high school and he never recovers, and his family is supportive but he is withdrawn and when he gets to Cold Oak, Dean saves him again at the expense of his own life, and everyone else dies, and the resultant survivor's guilt drives him right into Ruby's arms. And Dad makes a deal to save Dean's life, and it puts everything off a year, but Dad breaks the first Seal and Sam is on the path again, colder and less able to throw everything off._

"Dammit." Dean doesn't care that he's crying.

"Sam runs away from foster care at ten and gains the skills needed to survive at Cold Oak," Death says. And Dean sees:

_Sam survives the battle royale and he is herded by circumstance to the big gate, but he doesn't want to lead the army. He's possessed and forced to do it anyway, and it's his body leading the charge and it's his hands soaked in blood, and as a special treat, Death shows him Sam stuffed down into himself, a shattered soul with the desire to overcome, but no strength, and then Lucifer rises and Sam says yes because it's all he can say, and Lucifer takes his throne, and Sam is tormented in his own body for a thousand years of Lucifer's reign._

"Say Sammy survives it all," Death says. "Say he survives and Lucifer rises and Sam says no to him-"

"But Lucifer can't find Sam. Cas-"

"Oh, you think Cas is going to help this Sam? No, the only reason Cas even tolerated Sam's presence was because of you. He had to make sure you didn't influence Sam too much. Sam was supposed to break the final Seal. Who do you think let Sam out of the panic room so he could run off and do the deed? Oh, don't look so surprised. Did you think Sam magicked his way out of that box? No, that was your good friend Castiel. No, no angel branding for Sam."

And Dean sees:

_Sam is found immediately, and he refuses Lucifer as long as he can, but there's only so much a person can take, and eventually a yes is torn out of him, and he is unwilling and Lucifer doesn't care for him this way, without the fire in him that Lucifer wants, and Sam is left like a slave in a pit until Lucifer needs his true vessel to do the really hard work, and Sam is dead-eyed and he's tried to kill himself one hundred and seventy-two times in the first year alone._

"Stop!" Dean says. "Stop, please, God."

"Seen enough, Dean?" Death says. And he is standing near, and Dean is staring at the black of his walking stick and he's only just now realizing he's on his knees again, and his face is wet.

"There's nothing I can do," Dean breathes.

"There's one thing," Death says. "But I don't think you can manage it."

"But I tried _everything_."

"Don't be too hard on yourself, Dean. If there was ever a best case for Sam, you picked the right detail to change. Sam goes through life, suffers as humans are meant to, has a father figure who supports him, finds love and experiences the joy of fatherhood however briefly, and without any previous training, dies tragically in the first ten minutes of that demon battle at Cold Oak, defending poor dear Andrew from Ava's pet. He dies a hero and zips up to heaven. But you just had to step in, Dean. You just can't let Sam go. Any action you take prolongs his life and increases his misery."

"You're saying _I'm_ the reason Sam's life is hell?"

"Oh Dean. Please don't get ahead of yourself. I'm saying this was all put into motion before you were even born. Do you think the relationship you have with your brother is normal? What did that loaf Zachariah say? 'Erotically co-dependent?' You are the ground that keeps Sam moving forward. Without you keeping him alive and holding him back, Sam would run into every burning building, jump into every cage-"

"He did that anyway."

"Yes." Death considers him, as if trying to decide whether to expand on it. Then he says: "Regardless of what it does to him, to his soul, Sam will do it, because it is worth it to him. He will throw his own soul away to save someone else. Without you, Sam dies young, saving someone, because that is who he is. And as soon as you attempt to change that, Sam is forced to continue on, piling up the complications and missteps and guilt along the way. You are essential to his continued existence. The relationship you have with him transcends conventional reality, as it is designed to."

"Designed to? Like we're just puppets for some big plan?"

Death shrugs. "Aren't we all? The question is, will you continue to play your part?"

"The alternative - I'm just supposed to let him die."

"You could try it."

Dean is watching. Death looks aloof, and Dean realizes- "But I'll fail. Won't I."

Death presses his mouth into a sympathetic line. "I'm afraid so."

"I can't let Sam die."

Death looks at him with pity. "Without Sam, you're not even you, are you."

Dean thinks of a single toothbrush. Of a campfire, of _brother_ in a honey-south voice that is only a surrogate, of dirt and blood and blood and blood and the thing he needs most. And a single toothbrush in his hand, and neat and tidy and alone and undirected, and a single toothbrush, and _brother forever_.

"No," he says. "No, I'm not."

"I thought as much. I hope you at least learned something."

"Yeah, that no matter what I do, Sam's screwed."

Death clucks. "I should hope you've learned more than that. You'll need it if you want to help him even a little."

"You're sending me back?" In spite of himself, Dean's heart leaps.

Death shrugs.

"You knew this was gonna happen," Dean realizes. "You knew and you let me do it anyway."

"I let you do it _because_ I knew it'd turn out this way. I told you I liked you both."

"But-"

"I _am_ giving you what you want, Dean. You asked for this, the best possible life for Sam. But what you _wanted_ was to know that you are doing everything you can to give Sam his best chance for a happy life, and you had to live through the alternatives to learn that."

Dean is bewildered. "What does that mean?"

Death shrugs, smiles at him like a grandfather. "It means, short of letting him die, Sam's already living his best case scenario, and that's with you, broken head and all. He's the Job of his generation, Dean. He's lucky to have you. As I recall, Job had no one by the end."

"So. You're gonna put me back there. But what am I supposed to do then? Because he is just _done_."

Death sighs, thinks. "My suggestion? Get some therapy. You're train wrecks, the both of you."

"What?"

"You can't keep trying to put a magical bandage on this, Dean. You're human. You must deal with Sam's situation in a human way. I suggest an excellent therapist who is equipped to deal with your various psychic injuries."

"Who could possibly be equipped-"

"A psychic therapist, of course."

"Isn't that just another magical band-aid?"

Death looks at Dean like he's a silly child. "Be realistic, Dean. It isn't as though daddy just didn't love you enough. I'm sending someone to you. Expect her within the week."

Death turns to go, but he looks back over his shoulder. "And Dean? If you aren't going to let him go, _don't let him go._ "

And then Death is leaving, and Dean holds out his hand to him, saying "Wait, wait-!"

"Wait!" and he is saying it to Sam, his hand is out to Sam, and Sam on his knees with a gun to his temple, face wet, mouthing that he's so sorry.

"Sam, wait-"

Sam is shaking his head. "You're not my brother. You're not who this is for."

"I'm your brother, goddammit."

Sam looks at him sad, pitying.

Dean tries logic. "If I'm not your brother, who the hell is?"

Sam's eyes, face like _duh_ : "The one who loves me. Whichever one that is."

"Sammy that's _me._ I'm your brother. Forever, Sammy please."

Sam closes his eyes. "Only my brother calls me Sammy."

"I'm callin' you Sammy," Dean says. "I'm callin' you Sammy, _me_." Dean watches, thinks. What Death has said, what that other, younger, talkier Sam had said. He grabs onto the words. Lifeline words, tether words. "I know you, Sam. You haven't given up. You just don't know how to move forward. We're gonna move forward, okay? I'm gonna dig you out. You got me, kid, you got me. I'm not givin' up on you. Not _ever_. Sammy, please. Please. Please." He repeats it until his mouth is gravel.

Sam opens his eyes, a strange sound chokes out of his throat. "Brother forever," Sam breathes, and he's watching something Dean can't see, something small, he's doing math. Then he looks at Dean like Dean is new, like he has realized what _forever_ must mean, like he has solved something. "Dean?"

"Sam?"

"You don't have to do this." He sounds lucid. He sounds okay. Dean sighs in relief, but that gun is still hovering. "Just let me go. It's okay."

It's a test. It's a test.

"I don't want you to go. Sam. Please don't go. I want you to stay."

Sam looks at him like he expected something else. Mouth open, brows up, confused. "Dean-" The gun thumps to the floor. Sam is listing to one side. Dean knows about this; after effects of a seizure. Complete muscle fatigue. "Okay," Sam says. "I'll stay. Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Forever's always longer." He blinks long. Sam is going to pass right the fuck out.

But Dean is going to catch him. Dean is always going to catch him.

**THE END**

* * *

_This episode written to the following albums in a shuffle playlist:_   
_"This Binary Universe" by BT_   
_"Hello Avalanche" by The Octopus Project_   
_Tomas Dvorak's "Machinarium OST"_   
_The Trigun OST ("The First Donuts")  
_ _And half of Moby's "Play"_


End file.
